A Sufi Saint in Sixteenth-Century East Turkistan: New Evidence Concerning the Life of Khwāja Isḥāq

Abstract

The rise of Khwāja Ish .ā q, one of the most influential figures in the history of Central Asian Sufism, has often been explained by the patronage of particular royals. This "royal patron" model has, however, been based on a flawed reading of hagiographical sources by which crucial questions of genre are overlooked in the effort of mining these complex narratives for apparent historical facts. New evidence, presented here, allows us to question the "royal patron" model, along with the commonly-accepted chronology of Khwāja Ish .ā q's life, and calls for a different approach to Sufi hagiography as a historical source.